Caligulas Horse and
Young Pod

October 23,
2007

The
Roman emperor Caligula (A.D. 3741), whom historians now seem to agree had
something like postencephalitic syndrome, may have struck a blow for animal
sensitivity when he pushed the Roman senate into recognizing his favorite
horse as a god. For Roman historian Suetonius, however, such an act
indicated the degradation of the old ruling families in the face of imperial
tyranny. Caligula, who was the grandson of Augustuss wife Livia by an
earlier marriage, was free to wreak destruction on the Roman nobles
because they had already grown accustomed to military dictators. Despite
his orgy of murders and rapes, Caligula continued to enjoy some measure of
popular support until the military, which had grown tired of his excesses, ran
him through with a sword in A.D. 41.

This less than pleasant subject came to mind as I learned from
a former graduate student that John Podhoretz had been named
editorial director of Commentary magazine.
This event seems connected to another noteworthy one, the decision by the
Heritage Foundation to invite as an honored guest and expert on anti-
Semitism the Anti-Defamation League director, Abe Foxman. Although
Foxman is a person with demonstrably more smarts than the awkward son of
Norman and Midge, who has held a multitude of jobs that his parents obtained
for him and has done most of them without distinction, he is also a vicious
leftist bigot. When he is not simply fronting for AIPAC, Foxman is producing
hysterical tracts on the Christian anti-Semitism of those who oppose gay
marriage. His hatred of the Germans runs so deep that in 1999 he tried to
bully Metropolitan Books into canceling the publication of a work by two
Jewish authors (one of whom was the hapless Norman Finkelstein) that
challenged the deeply flawed book by Daniel Goldhagen presenting the
Germans as an eliminationist anti-Semitic people. Foxman is
furthermore the celebrity who had raged against The Passion of the
Christ, insisting that this cinematic adaptation of parts of the
Gospel narratives would unleash anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the United
States. The fact that this did not occur did not occasion an apology from
this Jewish counterpart of David Duke and Al Sharpton, but it may have
contributed to his being invited to address the Heritage Foundation. Needless
to say, such an invitation would never be extended to me or to Norman
Finkelstein.

This
brings me back to
Caligula and to the elevation of John to his new leadership position. To a
student of Roman history, it would not seem remarkable that, given the
deterioration of Roman republican government in the hundred years
preceding his reign, Caligula would have been able to degrade Roman
government even further. The stage had been set long before this madman
came on the scene, with a series of social wars and the military rule of
Pompey and Julius Caesar.

So too it is not surprising that the postwar conservative
movement, on whose fortunes I have just published a book, would have moved
from relative seriousness and something looking like an American Right to its
present pitiable state. The rot, which Joe Sobran portrayed graphically in his
column last week, did not set in yesterday. It has been going on for decades.
It can be seen in the decline of intelligence and character in the now
misnamed conservative movement and in the waning of any
nonleftist substance in what it preaches. (The resonant support by
movement conservatives of the socially liberal, war-hungry Giuliani as a
conservative presidential candidate is only one of the
numerous signs of this trend.) But even the transformation of
Commentary magazine, which once published the brilliant
essays of Elie Kedourie, Edward Schils, and other scholars of their stature,
into a staple of neoconservative propaganda and, finally, a sinecure for the
neer-do-well scions of neocon ruling dynasties, offers evidence of an
ongoing debacle.

The invitation to Foxman would not have been extended to
someone the neocon masters of Heritage disapproved of, and its tendering
may be an equally telling sign of where the movement once associated with
Russell Kirk, Eric Voegelin, and Frank Meyer has gone.

At this point I am willing to wager that if Norm and Midge
recommended my pet basset, Murray, for an executive post at Heritage or
an editorial slot at Commentary, their wish would be immediately granted. I
could also easily imagine that in the course of the following month,
comments would appear in National Review and in the
Weekly Standard praising Murrays appointment (he is
after all photogenic) and scolding those who had dared to oppose it as (what
else!) anti-Semites.

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